Down the Line
by Cantare
Summary: Introspective, Yamucha POV. The boy was monstrously strong. He could have killed me with one hand before he turned six. Yama, he called me. Uncle Yama.


**Down the Line**

_I now pronounce you man and wife._

Wild cheers and applause erupt all around, and the sound of my age-worn palms is hardly audible amidst the excitement of the crowd. My grin is stretched as wide as it can go, and for a moment I wish the groom would turn my way just so he can see me mouth the words. _Trunks, you lucky bastard. I'm so proud of you._

The evening passes in a whirlwind. Champagne fizz, crisp white tablecloth, caviar and crème brulee, sunset over an open dance floor, string quartet replaced by salsa band. He's leading Marron everywhere, diamond cufflinks against the delicate curve of her wrist, and they're taking in congratulations from all sides with beaming smiles. Both of them are on top of the world, as they should be.

A sigh at my side. I know the voice, of course, sensed she would find her way over to me eventually. I tilt my glass to her without turning my head; we both drink.

She sighs again, the portrait of a proud, wistful mother. "Never seen him so happy."

"He deserves it. They both do." The band's playing a classic ballad now, and Trunks and Marron are nearly standing still on the dance floor, foreheads touching as they sway in time. I should know the words to this song, but they're not coming to me easily.

"Are you happy?"

She tilts her head as she always does when answering a rhetorical question. "Duh." Pause. "But you know, it's hard…you start thinking, just yesterday he was my baby boy, just learning his words, going off to school, reading bedtime stories…damn it. I promised myself I wouldn't get all sentimental."

"You're faring better than most mothers, I think."

She smiles. I finally look at her; of course, sixty looks much better on her than on me. Her dress is conservative, simple, but she exudes the same confidence and allure as her twenty year-old self.

"Beautiful, as always."

She wrinkles her nose, waving off the perfunctory compliment, and takes my arm. "Dance with me."

I glance around the tent, knowing a dance with Bulma is a maximum security operation. If her husband's still here, I'm already dead for having accepted her hand on my elbow.

She laughs, pulls me toward the dance floor. "You think he'd stick around this long? He left after the main course, you know him."

"Never hurts to watch my back around you, Bulma." I flinch at the light slap on my arm, grinning even though it's not really a joke.

x.x.x

"I don't know if I'm good enough for her," he says again, and I resist the urge to hit him over the head with something. He wouldn't feel it, anyway.

"Look, Trunks, I have never in all my years seen a woman so deeply in love. You've already discussed marriage multiple times, and she's brought it up more often than you. She's serious, mature, totally committed to you; she managed to bring both her parents around, and that's saying a lot considering her mother's a frigid bitch and her father's the male version of Chichi when it comes to protecting his own. She's ready for you to ask. She's been ready for a while now, and you'd be a fool to make her wait longer."

The corner of his mouth lifts in a weak smile, but he still has his head in his hands and looks a mess. You'd think we were talking about something miserable, like his job, instead of the woman he loved. I beckon to the bartender and order another beer.

"Just relax a little." I nudge the glass over to him. He doesn't take it. I glance at my watch and sigh. Past midnight now. "Alright. Tell me again why you think this isn't going to work, and I'll tell you again why you're being an idiot. Unless you'd like to start agreeing with me about now and both of us can go home and wake up in time for work in the morning."

"Sorry, man. I'm just…" A pause, resignation. "An idiot, yeah, you're right." Another pause. "And a coward, I guess. I mean, what if I let her down? God knows how many times I let her down when we were just getting to know each other. I have no idea what it means to be a good husband. And I don't even want to think about being a father." He shudders. "She has all these expectations that…that I actually know what I'm doing. It scares the shit out of me."

"What you've been doing so far is fine. Love her. Respect her. Listen to her. That's it. Other stuff will come naturally." I hold off on finishing my ale, banking on the possibility he'll keep me here for another hour.

For a moment it looks like he's going to say more, pour out his heart all over again and swirl it half-heartedly around the counter. Instead he closes his mouth and looks somewhat determined, like he finally made a decision. I don't want to spoil his moment. A minute passes.

"Alright. Thanks, Yamucha," he says, and I hear confidence. I return his grateful words with a sigh of relief and a hard punch on the shoulder. He flinches back to humor me.

x.x.x

Eight. Nine. Ten.

Blessed silence. I clamp the pillow closer around my ears.

It starts again. One, two, three rings.

"Yamucha, fucking answer it already." The expected pissed-off mumble comes from beside me.

I don't bother to reply, just drag myself out of bed at whatever time it currently is, my eyes too bleary to see the clock. It's my fault I left the phone in the kitchen again. The cold tiles under my feet at least wake me up a little.

_Who the hell is this and why are you calling me at this hour – _"Hello?" I mutter into the receiver.

"Hey." One adolescent syllable, cracking at the end.

The silence is long and filled with things, emotions I can't identify. I rub my eyes so I can finally check the time. It's got to be something serious if the kid actually ventures to call me out of all people. We've hardly talked since Goku came back.

1:14 AM. _Trunks. What's wrong – _"What's up?"

"Sorry it's really late, I was just wondering…" The rest of it's incoherent, or maybe it's just my sleep-muddled brain still incapable of processing long sentences. Somewhere in there I catch something about needing to think or talk or something heavy on his mind. His voice is suddenly blurred by the slash of a strong wind streaking across the receiver. The kid's already outside, flying somewhere. Okay…

I cut him off. "Do you want to come over?"

"Sure," he answers a little too fast.

I nod. "Just, uh, give me a few minutes, alright? I have some cleaning to do."

"Okay."

I walk back into the bedroom, sit beside her and kiss the side of her forehead regretfully.

"Rena, you're going to hate me for this."

"What'd you do this time," she mumbles, trying to open her eyes.

"Friend's kid needs a place to stay tonight." I draw a hand through my hair, getting two fingers caught. She doesn't need to know the details. "Sorry, babe. I think he's in trouble. The kid's twelve."

She blinks, silent, thinking. Climbs out of bed slowly, without a word, gets dressed. She's efficient, down to earth, and I like that about her. "You're too nice," she remarks, fiddles with the hook of her bra. "Whose kid?"

I hesitate, and she half-knows already. "Bulma's."

She purses her lips and nods, and I think she meant to shake her head instead. "Trunks, is that his name?"

"Yeah." I try to save things from getting more awkward. "He hasn't talked to me in forever. I think something happened at home, he was already outside when he called. So…"

She smiles wryly and kisses me, her way of saying _shut up, I get it_. "Call me tomorrow. I want to know how it goes."

Trunks arrives barely fifteen minutes after she leaves. I've cleaned up the living room as best I can, and he looks almost embarrassed as he enters, knowing this is my private space and it's a very private hour, and is probably able to guess by the women's clothes hanging by the door that I'm not always alone anymore.

"Hey champ." I toss him a soda from the fridge and heat up some leftover steak. Everything's normal and cool in my apartment as it always has been, the way he needs it to be. "Been a while."

He sits on the floor and leans against the foot of the couch. There's a sharp pop as he opens the soda, and it's another minute before I leave the kitchen and serve him steak in a puddle of grease. I would offer chips or something else, but Saiyans prefer meat at all hours of the day.

"Thanks." He smiles up at me.

"What's up?"

He shakes his head, keeps smiling, "Nothing, just couldn't sleep. Girls on my mind, you know. Wanted your advice." And things are normal then. We're just going to have a chat, catch up, pretend he hasn't been absent from my life for the past year, and that he just skipped on over at 1 AM to borrow some porn or watch TV.

Turns out that's exactly what he feels like doing—watch TV, I mean. He flips channels aimlessly for a while before settling on some old mob film. I go back to the kitchen for a beer and sit down beside him on the floor.

"How's school?"

"Alright."

"How many girls exactly?"

"Just two."

I have to laugh at that. Twelve years old and already a ladies' man with high expectations. He must have gotten that from his mother's side.

"Still hang out with Goten?"

"Yeah. They're all on vacation this week though."

"Ah." I put aside the questions, now knowing why he came here. "How's your mom?"

"Always pissed off. I can't wait for this whole pregnancy thing to be over."

"I can imagine."

The protagonist in the movie is making his grand escape, shooting a round into the group of mobsters chasing him, black cars, squealing tires, pavement and blood. The two of us stare at the screen, my eyes are tired, and Trunks accidentally tips over his empty soda can. I go to the kitchen to get him another.

x.x.x

I get a call in the middle of a Titans/Leopards game. I fumble with my cell, drop it by accident as I curse at the screen. My old team's been playing horribly this whole season. Three innings left to redeem themselves.

"Hey." Clipped, impatient, whoever the caller is has to hear it in my voice. Shit, another miss.

"Yamucha, I've got great news." Trunks' voice is all smiles.

"Yeah?" I'm still distracted.

"Oh…sorry, is this a bad time?" he hesitates, and I feel kind of bad for breaking his platinum grin.

"Nope, what's the news?" I turn down the volume a little. Wait…yeah, I bet I know what it—

"Marron and I are expecting."

Priorities flip; the game is forgotten, and I'm swearing at Trunks instead, in a good way. _Lucky bastard. Con-fucking-gratulations. How far along? Due date? Boy or girl? She wants a girl, right?_

He laughs and fields all my questions like a seasoned pro, and I know he must have answered all of them already for tons of other people. I can't imagine how excited Bulma must be. Krillin must be ecstatic too. Don't know about Eighteen, or Vegeta for that matter.

My team's losing miserably somewhere in the background, and for once I don't care. I'm just really happy for Trunks, and the warm feeling in my chest almost hurts.

x.x.x

On Trunks' sixteenth birthday, I get him a card and a few videogames, don't stick around too long at the party, one of the most extravagant events I've seen Bulma put on so far (and that's saying a lot). The Capsule Corp lawn is teeming with excited teenagers whose hormones fluctuate more wildly than the ki of a prepubescent Saiyan. I can't stomach it for long.

But I do notice there aren't just two girls anymore. More like ten, for Trunks alone. Goten commands his fair share of female attention too, and I smile to myself as I get into my car. The boys are growing up. I remember what it was like at their age, except I wasn't nearly as smooth with girls. I was terrified of them, namely of the woman running toward me on the lawn right now. Her ponytail's falling apart in an elegant mess; she just started growing her hair long again. I always liked it loose.

"Leaving so soon?"

I roll down the window. "Yeah. Sorry." I jerk my thumb over at the crowd of overgrown children, now riveted on Trunks and Goten's friendly spar. "Not my scene."

"You think I enjoy hanging out with teenagers and watching high school bimbos hit on my son? Come on, just stay a little longer," she says, and I roll my eyes at how bratty she sounds even in middle age.

"I'll stay, but I'm staying in the car. You can stand there, or get in."

She folds her arms, pouting, and chooses the second option. I turn the AC on full blast and notice out of the corner of my eye how strands of hair float back from her face.

"Sixteen. Big year."

"He's actually kind of embarrassed. He kept telling me he didn't want a big party 'cause I was treating him like a girl, with a Sweet Sixteen or something."

"You _are_ treating him like a girl."

"Well, it's not like he's got any complaints now," she says dryly, drawing her feet up on the seat. She's watching her son chat up a brunette in a miniskirt, a girl he seems to be paying special attention to. A dismayed frown. "That one's a brainless slut. I told him to stay away from her."

"I dunno, Bulma, I wish I'd dated more dumb girls in my youth." The joke earns me a swat on the arm. "Maybe not sluts, though."

"The bitter old ex speaking again, huh," she says petulantly.

"Nope. Just saying. Dumb girls are good for the ego to an extent. Though crazy rich genius scientists are an extra boost." I grin and she laughs, conceding.

"We were such stupid kids."

"No disagreement there."

Silence for a while. She picks at her nails, turns down the AC because her well-toned arms are covered in goosebumps.

"Sixteen years went damn fast," she remarks. I nod and close my eyes. It's too casual, the way she says it, knowing what that number means. It's a slap in the face.

"Should've dated more dumb girls," I repeat, also too casually. Flat.

"Should've been smarter," she says, and her voice is soft, contemplative. "We were such stupid kids."

x.x.x

A desert bandit, a scientist princess hybrid, and a little monster of a boy, on a hunt for mystical wish-granting orbs. It's a bizarre old story that still makes me smile, and at age sixteen, Bulma with her dreams of eternal strawberry fields said we'd tell it to our kids one day. I nodded, probably blushed, definitely panicked inside. Kids? That meant marriage, settling down, getting a job, and wait, childbirth…God help me.

A baseball player, a scientist princess hybrid without strawberries, and a monster of an adult Saiyan with a boy's heart, now with a son of his own. How Goku managed to marry and have children before both of us, I still can't really figure out, though Bulma of course blamed it on me. My success in baseball got to my head, she accused. I never had time for her anymore. I had too much fun without her. I had too many female fans.

A second-tier fighter and a scientist princess hybrid, both older, a little more mature and devoted to each other. When the Saiyans arrived, I just thought of me and her, not Goku, not anyone else on the ragtag team we'd gathered. I had to do my part in what we all imagined to be the most devastating battle we'd ever fight (oh how we were wrong) and survive for her. No showing off, just survival. I failed and died, and in the other world I only fell in love with her more. She built a spaceship, traveled to Namek, risked her life there, hell, she even learned an alien language on the way. All to bring me back to life. I took my first breath in my second life on Earth because of her, and she'd never looked more beautiful than at that moment.

A third-tier fighter pushed to the wayside, a scientist princess hybrid who imagined herself a queen, and a black-hearted monster in the real sense of the term. Here's a more familiar story found in a lot of books and movies. Simplified a little, it's the nice guy, the girl, and the mean jerk. I can't say he stole her from me. Bulma would never put up with being reduced to a mindless thing to be stolen or given back. For whatever multitude of reasons, she stopped loving me and started loving him, and my life started emptying out like a punctured tank, after all the dreams and promises, petty fights and solo tirades she'd faithfully filled me with over sixteen years. _We're going to tell our kids about our adventures. How you were terrified of me and planned to ask an all-powerful wish-granting dragon to erase your fear of girls. / What about how you wanted to ask that all-powerful wish-granting dragon for _strawberries_, genius?_

A friendly advice-dispensing ex, an excited new mother, and a tiny bawling baby, a spitting image of the man who'd replaced me. The boy was monstrously strong. He could have killed me with one hand before he turned six. _Yama_, he called me. It was so strange to see a sweet innocent smile on a murderer's face. Eventually I learned to dissociate him from his father. I guess it helped that the bastard was hardly around during his son's formative years. _Hey champ_. _Race you to that tree. Ready, set, go! … Trunks, I said _to_ the tree, not _through_ it!_

A free babysitter, an ambitious businesswoman with little time for family, and a growing Saiyan boy clamoring for attention. I saw the conflict in his face sometimes. His father, the idol of his childhood, told him I was weak and worthless, beneath him. So was every other human, of course, but Trunks was supposed to show extra condescension toward me. His mother, spoiling him mad one second and harping at him the next, told him I was the closest friend she'd ever had, and to treat me with respect (she's a lovely hypocrite). He settled for a wavering medium, and I put up with it. I was Uncle Yama, punching bag, playmate, ice cream-buyer, slow old man, a speck next to his father.

A storyteller with time on his hands, and an imaginative, story-hungry child.

_And in the end, after long months of searching and fighting random enemies, we finally found all the Dragonballs. The eternal dragon burst out of them and uncoiled into the sky like a long garden hose._

_And then what? What did you wish for?_

_Nothing. There was an annoying bad guy in the way that we had to beat first. Then Oolong jumped in and wished for underwear, so neither of us got to make our own wishes._

_Oh. But Mommy said she got what she wanted eventually, 'cause she married a prince._

_That she did. And I guess she doesn't care much for strawberries anymore, huh?_

x.x.x

"Ow. Okay, I give up." I tilt my head downward a little more as the small blonde toddler tugs my hair harder and giggles. I'd almost forgotten how vicious part-Saiyan children can be. "The hairy monster bows down in defeat before the warrior princess."

"Laise, let go of Uncle Yama's hair now, it's not nice," Marron scolds, prying her daughter's chubby hands off me. The little girl frowns and whines, trying to escape her mother's grip.

The weather's beautiful today. There's too much to see in this park, birds gliding over the shallow pool, kids racing each other across the grass, ice cream melting on the pavement. I'd thought they'd planned a family gathering or something, but apparently they only invited me. Laise has gotten a lot bigger since I last saw her, and actually has a personality now. Can't say I'm totally captivated by it, but it's obvious she'll grow up to be smart and beautiful, maybe bitchy depending on how much she's spoiled. Seems to take after her grandparents (on her father's side) instead of her parents.

Marron manages to distract Laise from attacking me by pointing at Trunks in the distance, who's waiting in line at the popsicle stand. Two years old and she's already addicted to sugar. Terrible.

"Thanks for coming out today," Marron says, bouncing her daughter lightly on one knee. "Never knew Laise would like you so much."

"She's got angry cyborg and Saiyan blood mixed in her. I should've stayed away," I joke. Laise somehow realizes I'm talking about her and looks up at me, beautiful blue eyes and fair skin, and sticks out her tongue.

"Trunks thought of asking you to be her godfather, you know. But we figured, well…"

It's definitely a surprise and a compliment. "I know, I'm too damn old." I catch myself gingerly. "Sorry. _Darn _old."

Trunks is still in that line, starting to look impatient. It's just too hot today and everyone wants something frozen. Marron and I dawdle away the time, sitting on that bench with their kid between us.

"So how's everything? You guys are almost at the four year mark, right?"

"It's gone well. Trunks is good, things are fine between us. I don't know about our parenting skills, but we're learning every day." She laughs lightly, remembering something. "To think, he used to be so terrified of marriage and fatherhood. He's doing great."

"Oh, he's probably still terrified. He's just better at hiding it."

She laughs again. "Maybe."

Trunks is finally at the cart and paying for four popsicles. I forgot to tell him I don't want one. He's exasperated and sweating buckets by now, but he puts on a smile as he walks back toward us, tucking away his own discomfort at the sight of his daughter eagerly clambering off the bench toward the frozen sticks in his hand.

"Hey champ." He scoops her up easily with one arm and hoists her onto his shoulder. She clings like a little monkey and grabs for her share. He seems to remember that Marron and I are still sitting over here, and looks up, waves. There's joy and contentment in his gaze, and I'm proud of him, that old warm feeling stirring in my chest again. It's like the burn after a long hard spar.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry I haven't written much in the DBZ fandom lately. Please let me know what you think about the style and tone of this; it seems pretty different and hopefully more mature than my other pieces._


End file.
